Monday Lizard Sex

The National Science Foundation is just a font of crazy press releases. It's like Paris Hilton, for nerds. Today's example is an apparently-important discovery of a genetic basis for altruism in male side-blotched lizards:

Side-blotched lizards, it turns out, come in three different throat colors--blue, orange or yellow. ... The three throat colors in the males correlate with strikingly different behaviors.

The blues form partnerships, while the oranges are aggressors and the yellows are sneaky.

Say a pair of blue-throated males, for example, is protecting its territory from roaming orange-throated bullies. In a true act of selflessness, one blue throat steps forward to battle an intruding orange aggressor--thereby sacrificing his own chances to successfully mate.

That's being a good wingman, no? Of course, some are lovers, not fighters:

Meanwhile, as blue throats and orange throats battle it out, yellow throats quietly sneak into unprotected territories to find females.

I'm not sure why, but I see the makings of a rap opera here.